on borrowing and lending ii

wrote a little bit on this a little while back. it's a riff off of the opening line to the second track off the antlers' 'hospice' (its the first track with lyrics):

i wish that i had known in that first minute we met the unpayable debt that i owed you

the previous writing focused more on the notion of this unpayable debt and what it entails in the light of the overall human condition.experience.whathaveyou. ... just caught them again tonight, and beautifully enough they opened with 'kettering' which i had never seen live before. listened to it in various live forms since the end of the show before stumbling across the laundromatinee video that i had dug so much before. anyways, probably five listens later now, i have more thoughts on this song.

. . .
struck most by the 'wish' that sets the time of the narrators singing of the song wayyy after the fact as part of a reminiscence. and this is obvious enough; in and of itself, it is nothing. however, situating the wish in the context of a first meeting and an unknowable therefore unpayable debt is heavy. the debt is unpayable for a couple of reasons. most importantly, this is not a financial debt, this is not a debt fit for a ledger. this is not a debt that one expects to be repaid. this is not a debt that carries a necessarily knowing creditor. its a psychic debt, its an emotional debt. this is not a debt that can be repaid in any clear, crisp manner. but the narrator here wants transcendence. he wants to be able to preemptively know how he will be changed. perhaps in order to give this other their most just treatment, their repayment. perhaps for some other reason.

since this is impossible, for him to go back and know in the first minute he met her, the real importance seems to lie not in the looking back but in the projecting forward. the statement can't be seen as merely setting the tone for 'kettering'; it sets the tone for and reflects on the entirety of 'hospice' yet to come. so at the same time that the narrator is looking back, we the listener are planted firmly at the beginning of his tale, placed in the shoes he'd like to be in. we are at the beginning unknowing and in this beginning stage much closer to not being impotent to knowing the debt owed. as all art worth it's name, the value of 'kettering' is in the story's pointing towards our own future course of action, moving us towards living a better (in this case) more conscientious life. fundamentally, im arguing that the point of the song is to consider how knowing about such unpayable debts, really feeling the desire to have known it, how does this knowledge change the narrator as he lives into the future? how does such a contemplation change us? these are the same questions, tho, for he is us. do we live more conscientiously, trying to know and acknowledge through reciprocal action the little and big kindness' received?

the resolution of this question is found mixed in with the drywall but also all over the facade, all the way up at the towering peak; there isn't one place that houses the answer to the most prominent question flowing from this isolated, opening line: what is the specific unpayable debt that motivated the line? i dont feel equipped to break this down or reduce it to one shining sentence. but maybe i can answer this in a sideways manner by addressing an issue raised above. namely, whether the debt is unpayable because the creditor here, the girl, is dead when he realized the debt owed. however, i do think that the creditor in this case could indeed be the narrator since the credit extended, the favor done, is, i think, executed unknowingly by the girl. but thats a total guess.

either way, the fact that she's dead when he gains knowledge of this tremendous debt controls; it doesnt matter whether she knew it or didnt know it while living. she's no longer living and the debt cannot be repaid to her (if indeed such debts can be repaid which is debatable and has been fodder for the initial post on this song). the narrator can go forward, casting himself out into the world with compassion and empathy for others and in this way perhaps repay the debt to the universe. though, as far as the individual woman who profoundly affected him, he knows only wisps of memories, he knows only yearning. this is the point, i think. synthesizing this looking back with the looking forward, he, we, can go forward knowing about these unpayable debts occupying perhaps permanently negated space, and live with sincerity towards knowing other people, towards knowing the constant empathy flowing into us and infinite store of empathy within our every step, finger tip, glance, synapse.